FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT LOW COST - PAGE 2

India and China offer a study in contradiction. While India is the most preferred IT outsourcing destination, China is barely mentioned. However, when it comes to domestic usage of IT, India is a laggard. Whereas China has an installed base of around 40 million PCs, India has just eight million PCs. With 3-4 million small and medium-sized enterprises, the installed base needs to be at least 30 million PCs. The inadequate IT usage affects productivity, economy and global competitiveness adversely.

Maybe the world thinks US, Inc. is creating jobs in India because it's cheaper. but American CEOs know better. As a report in The Wall Street Journal argues, it's also for the sheer quality of the talent available in India. Indeed, there's a palpable shift towards Indiashoring for better brainpower as well as lower cost. One theatre where this is evident is the chip business . Initially, while chip designing was done in the US, labour-intensive assembly operations were shifted to Asian countries.

NEW DELHI: Delhi Government today started the process of allotment of around 1,500 low cost flats to industrial workers of the city. Government's infrastructure building agency DSIIDC, which constructed the flats in Bawana and Narela held a draw of lots to distribute 1,420 flats. The draw was held in the presence of senior officers of Industries and Labour departments. Officials said government had received over 11,000 applications from the workers for getting houses under the Rajiv Gandhi Housing scheme for industrial workers.

NEW DELHI: The next edition of the low-cost Aakash tablet will have a SIM card slot, a faster processor, higher memory capacity, and will be able to function on both the android operating system and Linux . But IIT Bombay, which is spearheading the effort, would like to ensure that improved offerings don't result in a higher price for the tablet. The tablet is available for students at subsidised rate of 1,130 while the government purchases it at 2,263. The initial plan is to roll out 50 lakh units of Aakash 3 tablet and a global tender is expected to put out in February.

LUCKNOW: While real estate biggies like DLF, Omaxe and Ansal API are catering to the high end demand for housing in the rapidly growing state capital, a few developers have also chalked out plans for addressing the untapped demand for low cost housing segment. Most of these low cost housing projects are coming on the outskirts of the city. "We had conducted a market research to gauge the demand for low cost housing and found that there lied a huge unmet demand from middle and low income families.

KOLKATA: Faced with the threat of low-cost airlines, domestic carrier Indian Airlines (IA) is seriously looking at the possibility of converting its subsidiary Alliance Air into a low-cost model. If a final decision is taken, the carrier would be the among the first few domestic airlines to enter the low-cost space. "If market dynamics demand, we will promote Alliance Air as the lower-cost variant of IA, with an emphasis on non-trunk routes. The subsidiary can also act as a supplement arm on key trunk routes," top IA sources said.

LUCKNOW: SpiceJet airline today launched its low cost Sharjah-Lucknow services which will fly four days a week between the two cities. "We are pleased to bring Lucknow on our international air travel network. Sharjah is one of the most sought after regions in the Middle-East and the connectivity from Lucknow and Varanasi adds to the convenience of the flyers from the state", SpiceJet Chief Executive Officer Neil Mills told reporters. Delhi-Sharjah flight via Lucknow and (return flight)

NEW DELHI: Kingfisher Airlines today justified its plans to close down its low-cost carrier in four months saying the operating costs involved were the same as in a full-service carrier and the revenues lesser. Maintaining that there was more competition in the no- frill segment than the full-service segment in India, Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Aggarwal said the decision would help the airline company generate additional revenue after its exit from the low-cost service, where competition was more intense and a price war could hit the margins.

NEW DELHI: The low cost public sector carrier, Air India Express, will soon start operations from some southern cities to the Gulf and West Asia at 30 per cent lower fares than the regular ones, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said on Thursday. The low cost carrier, a fully-owned subsidiary of Air India, whose "fares will be 30 per cent less than the regular fare will be started from some places in South India like Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad", he told the newly constituted Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Civil Aviation Ministry.